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February 23, 2006

Avoid the Draft Elephant: Bring Home the National Guard

"American Ports and Borders Now Patrolled by US National Guard" is the only headline that will help you sleep better, ever. It doesn't take a genius to see that this whole debacle regarding the security of the homeland is because the Bush team is using the national guard overseas, avoiding civilian conscription for political reasons, at the expense of the Guard and its mission at home. Deploying the Guard instead of a national draft after 9/11, a just cause, equals no draft, no-hate the status quo, Republicans stay in power.

Only those who "choose" the military life voluntarily are touched personally. If you do not have a family member or a friend in the military, you may be totally unplugged from what this is doing to the Guard.

Loose borders, loose contracts, loose lips, no brains. I am a snob about this, and proud of it. This administration has taken the true mission of the National Guard forces, homeland security, shipped them to Iraq, never got it together once we hit Baghdad and never have held control of liberated areas. Insufficient troops, not enough body armor, victories measured in body counts... deja vu all over again. Americans need to engage this problem on a national, civilian, personal level. If we are to "win", stop the native violence there, we need thousands of troops to overpower the insurgency physically, hold the territory, no question. We need cops and governors and healthcare workers, frontline managers, factory hands, technicians, everyone in this country to get this mismanged disaster under control and stop the "waste". It is our duty, the price we must pay because of Bush.

Our dads and grandpa's, jumped off the assembly line in their prime time, most of them volunteering to defend America after the unprovoked attack by the Japanese. It was Pearl Harbor that brought all Americans to attention and the seriousness of war and personal sacrifice. Regular families, everyone involved, sacrificing. Americans were willing to die to protect our country then, never imagining the nightmare of international terrorism their children would face. They are our hard-fought lesson of a just war. Moms, pops, brothers and sisters in a common cause- defending our land, our people, our democracy.